The vehicle mounted feed hopper device generally relates to agricultural implements and more specifically to portable livestock feed delivery devices. More particularly, the invention mixes feed as its paddle mixers and dispensing screw turn oppositely.
For millennia, people have raised livestock. People herded the livestock on range, often open, and the livestock ate what they could find. Though this description mentions livestock and cattle, livestock includes other animals reared for human consumption. People gathered livestock into herds of a size that fit the capacity of the owner. In some countries, large herds equated to immense wealth. Here, large herds spawned the cowboys of the Old West. The cowboys would gather the herds from Texas to Montana and move the herds towards the interior of the Great Plains, such as Kansas railheads for live transport to the East Coast or for packing activity elsewhere in the country. The cattle drives of the Old West became legend for their size and the consumption of forage by the cattle on the move. Large numbers of cattle in a herd often called for a large ranch. Select ranches, as in Texas, consisted of many square miles. Over time, disputes arose between settlers on the Great Plains and the cattlemen moving their herds across the ranges of the Great Plains. In time, governmental action settled the dispute and allowed settlers to remain, dooming free range of cattle. Cattle returned to ranches. With the onset of two World Wars, demand for beef continued its increases.
Though no longer able to range freely, cattle proliferated on ranches. Once big in the days of cattle drives, ranches remain big and hold large herds of cattle on their many hundreds of acres or square miles. Ranching and cattle remain big business in the country. Though livestock have been with people for millennia, a key problem remains: livestock must eat and grow. Early on, cowboys moved cattle for foraging off the land. Keeping of cattle on ranches though limited foraging to defined land parcels. Weather and crop pests may further curtail foraging. However, cattlemen and ranchers supplement forage for livestock with feeds of all description.
One feed includes blending grains with silage such as hay, that has a long stem, and delivering the blended feed to the livestock at feeding stations upon a ranch. The feeding stations include various bunkers or troughs that hold the feed at a height and position suitable for the animals to consume. The cattleman then restocks the bunkers or troughs as needed by the livestock or as desired by the cattleman for weight gain of the cattle. When a cattleman buys grain products directly from the suppliers instead of from the feed mill, the cattleman saves a significant amount of cost. Feed mills have a customary markup on their grains, as most distributors do for their costs, but they also charge a fee to mix grain products together before delivering them to your ranch or farm. Large cattle operations use Total Mixed Ration machines, or TMR, to cut out the middleman from their grain products. A ranching operation large enough to afford a TMR then purchases its commodities, i.e. corn, soy beans, and distillers grain, directly from the producers. A ranching operation then saves money in two respects: lower cost of mixing the commodities into a feed ration and the markup on the commodity from the feed mill.